It's not the Kinect that's responding to his movement, it's the game. This comment seems completely dismiss-able.

oh man.

Were you trying to communicate something?

Any game can have laggy response to input from anything, be a gamepad, racing wheel, guitar controller, etc. You can't blame the controller without some sort of information about the system as a whole which this guy didn't have. All he knows is that this one quote unquote "game" didn't respond quickly to his waving his hands around. Did he try any other Kinect demos? Did he ask the game developers what was up? Did he collect any other data at all before voicing the conclusion that Kinect 2 is just as unresponsive as 360 Kinect? If not, then he's talking out of his ass and can be safely ignored.

I'm not sure what part of the videos you're referring to. Fantasia is still largely a mimicking game like Dance Central. But it adds some sections where you can adjust the song and do things like stretch the notes of the song (like during the cube portion). If you're referring to the tracing elements, that's the person trying to trace the line and dot, not the game following the person. So if you're referring to that, that's not latency by the game. That's latency by the person. You can't, for example, scribble your name as the game is not following you. It's expecting you to follow it.

I'm referring to the user making a gesture then there being a delay before the action is represented on screen (aka latency). For example it is even noticeable when he chooses the instrument on the video you posted "Fantasia: Music Evolved hands-on "Bohemian Rhapsody" E3 2013" with the instrument selection at 1:57. He selects the blue instrument group and there is a significant delay (just like during regular gameplay as well) before his gesture is shown on screen and the selection is made.

Quote:

Originally Posted by michaeltscott

Were you trying to communicate something?

Any game can have laggy response to input from anything, be a gamepad, racing wheel, guitar controller, etc. You can't blame the controller without some sort of information about the system as a whole which this guy didn't have. All he knows is that this one quote unquote "game" didn't respond quickly to his waving his hands around. Did he try any other Kinect demos? Did he ask the game developers what was up? Did he collect any other data at all before voicing the conclusion that Kinect 2 is just as unresponsive as 360 Kinect? If not, then he's talking out of his ass and can be safely ignored.

I hope that it is just Fantasia not having been programmed very well and that all Kinect 2.0 games aren't this lagtastic.

I hope that it is just Fantasia not having been programmed very well and that all Kinect 2.0 games aren't this lagtastic.

It's not useful to pass judgement on the controller based on a demo of a game that's not scheduled to ship this year; they've got 7 months or more of work to do on it. Microsoft has been walking people through a demo where they display 3 different views of a body moving in front of a Kinect 2 and being tracked by it. Their demo software is responding pretty much instantly to the movements of a person standing in front of it, indicating to me that information about the movements of human bodies tracked by the Kinect is available in real time, without lag (you can see a clip of that demo here). I have to think that any lag between you moving your arms and Fantasia's response is due to whatever Fantasia is doing to determine that response (a process of unknown computational complexity) and not due to some delay in the system providing data from Kinect.

It's not useful to pass judgement on the controller based on a demo of a game that's not scheduled to ship this year; they've got 7 months or more of work to do on it. Microsoft has been walking people through a demo where they display 3 different views of a body moving in front of a Kinect 2 and being tracked by it. Their demo software is responding pretty much instantly to the movements of a person standing in front of it, indicating to me that information about the movements of human bodies tracked by the Kinect is available in real time, without lag (you can see a clip of that demo here). I have to think that any lag between you moving your arms and Fantasia's response is due to whatever Fantasia is doing to determine that response (a process of unknown computational complexity) and not due to some delay in the system providing data from Kinect.

That's a good point, I've watched the simple demo you listed as well. In real practice every 360 game I've tried hasn't been that responsive and the 1 game I have watched on the Xbone isn't either.

I think it is more than fair to judge what games they have actually demo'd and I have watched. If they show other games I'd love to see them. If they can cut out the large amount of latency beyond a tech demo and in a full game with as you put it computational complexity, that would be great.

I just wanted to clarify that the guy Bobby Blackwolf (the podcast I was listening to), is actually very interested in Fantasia, and he thought it will be pretty cool game. He's not hating on the game at all, basically he was just saying that the new Kinect still has issues, or at least it did during his demo in what was supposed to be ideal conditions.

If you watch the Harmonix webcasts where they show the game being played at length, they talk about how there's a large window of time for motions in Fantasia to register, similar to the way they deal with the timing in Rock Band at the lower difficulties. This is less a matter of the latency of Kinect 2 (since that's already leaked... ~60ms latency for full processing compared to ~90ms for Kinect 1, which is impressive considering how much more data it's having to process) than it is the particular requirements of that game. They're trying to make it more about the experience than "winning", so they're leaving a fairly wide window for inputs. Fantasia is probably not the best game to use for judging the actual latency of the sensor. They still have a lot of tweaking left to do with it.

I think it is more than fair to judge what games they have actually demo'd and I have watched. If they show other games I'd love to see them. If they can cut out the large amount of latency beyond a tech demo and in a full game with as you put it computational complexity, that would be great.

You can judge games all you want, but you shouldn't ascribe lag to the controller. As I said, the tech demo indicates that the data from Kinect is available in realtime; the source of lag is much more likely to be in early, unoptimized code than in the system's delivery of the controller's input. As far as we know the game would be just as laggy in response to input from a pad, were that an option. This guy saying, "if you expected Xbox One Kinect to be more responsive than 360 Kinect, think again" based on a demo of a game that's many months short of release is unwarranted.

What other Xbox One Kinect games were demoed? AFAIKFantasia was it. Kinect Sports Rivals is the only other announced motion game that I've read about and if they were demoing it no one has blogged about it.

The 360 Kinect games that I play aren't particularly laggy. Those would be Fruit Ninja Kinect and Kinect Sports Season Two (I like its darts game). Many people seem to enjoy the dance and exercise games.

I just wanted to clarify that the guy Bobby Blackwolf (the podcast I was listening to), is actually very interested in Fantasia, and he thought it will be pretty cool game. He's not hating on the game at all, basically he was just saying that the new Kinect still has issues, or at least it did during his demo in what was supposed to be ideal conditions.

Did he turn around to the developers and say, "Hey, what's up with all this lag"? If so, did he get a response of, "Kinect sucks--there's nothing we can do about that"?

You can judge games all you want, but you shouldn't ascribe lag to the controller. As I said, the tech demo indicates that the data from Kinect is available in realtime; the source of lag is much more likely to be in early, unoptimized code than in the system's delivery of the controller's input. As far as we know the game would be just as laggy in response to input from a pad, were that an option. This guy saying, "if you expected Xbox One Kinect to be more responsive than 360 Kinect, think again" based on a demo of a game that's many months short of release is unwarranted.

What other Xbox One Kinect games were demoed? AFAIKFantasia was it. Kinect Sports Rivals is the only other announced motion game that I've read about and if they were demoing it no one has blogged about it.

The 360 Kinect games that I play aren't particularly laggy. Those would be Fruit Ninja Kinect and Kinect Sports Season Two (I like its darts game). Many people seem to enjoy the dance and exercise games.

I didn't interpret Anthony1's post to be merely about Lag but instead about other issues that I know I dealt with when playing Kinect on the 360, like simply registering me or my inputs at times among other issues. I could be wrong but that isn't what I took away from what Anthony1 quoted.

I don't know what other games were demo'd i have only watched demos for this game. I want to see it in use for other games as well.

Actually, the guy only talked about it for a couple of seconds. It was just a throw away comment, but it caught me by surprise.

Blackwolf normally seems very pro-Microsoft to me, which is why the comment caught me off guard, but now thinking about it more, I think it's more a case of him just being a Kinect hater, despite his pro-Microsoft tendencies. I'm still hopeful the Kinect will be good, because it better be, we're already paying for it. I was looking forward to a next-gen Ubi Soft Your Shape Fitness game, but haven't heard anything about it.

Bloomberg has a nice new article on the Kinect and how it was completely designed internally. Remember that Microsoft bought 3DV and Canesta way back way which had similar time of flight tech (though much lower resolution). People assumed it was for patent protection since they went with PrimeSense chips but now we're seeing the fruits of those acquisitions. It's one of the first fully internally developed silicon by Microsoft.

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), seeking to fend off competition for its Xbox game console by souping up the Kinect motion sensor, is tapping a new semiconductor developer: itself.

For the first time, the company will build its own processors based on an in-house design. The new chips will make Kinect more accurate and responsive using an imaging technology found in military gear, said Cyrus Bamji, who played a key role in developing the silicon architecture. Previously, Kinect relied on an off-the-shelf chip from Israel’s PrimeSense Ltd.

“We are seeing a big trend towards more of the hardware makers out there, whether it’s smartphones or whether it’s tablets, starting to bring more of that semiconductor function in-house,” said Jon Erensen, an analyst at market-research firm Gartner Inc. “It allows them to differentiate. Everybody in the market is using the same off-the-shelf processor.”

Time of Flight

The Kinect chips, designed by a team mostly based in Microsoft’s Silicon Valley office, use a technology called Time of Flight that will let the sensor track minute changes in a user’s body, like finger movements and facial expressions, a much more precise system than the earlier version. That lets Microsoft eliminate some of the failings of the first Kinect, Bamji said.

Time of Flight works by bouncing photons off a person or object, and has been used by military agencies for tasks like detecting a tank hiding behind tree cover, Bamji said. Texas Instruments Inc. and Infineon Technologies AG are also developing chips using Time of Flight.

Design Challenge

There’s also the challenge and cost of creating a new chip from scratch, which can run into the tens of millions of dollars and take months of testing. One mistake in design or manufacturing slip-up can cause months of delay to a final product. For a company like Microsoft, with less experience in developing chips, there’s a risk that performance may not be as expected, Gartner’s Erensen said.

Taking Note

While Microsoft’s Xbox and WebTV units have previously done some work designing chips, the company has never handled this much of a chip’s design, development and assembly, said Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Nick Baker, who leads the silicon architecture and verification teams. The company has about 200 people working on microprocessors. Only the mass manufacturing for the Kinect chips has been handed off to a chip foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Other groups at Microsoft are taking notice, asking the Xbox team about their work on chips, and may even pursue a greater role in customizing their own microprocessors, said Todd Holmdahl, the vice president who has overseen Xbox hardware since the development of the first version in 1999.

Custom Features

The world’s largest software maker first moved into making its own computer hardware last year with a line of tablets called Surface. The company could choose to customize existing chips in order to gain attention and new features for Microsoft-powered smartphones and tablets, which have a tiny share of both those markets, Directions on Microsoft’s Sanfilippo said.

“It’s pretty likely that Microsoft will be getting more into the hardware business,” he said. “So it makes sense for them to invest more right down to the silicon so they can have proprietary features.”

That investment may be crucial to the continued success of Xbox, the bright spot among Microsoft’s consumer businesses, especially as sales of the company’s Windows personal-computer software stagnate and as Surface demand disappoints. Xbox accounted for the bulk of revenue in Microsoft’s $10.2 billion Entertainment and Devices division.

The appeal of Xbox One will rest partially on whether the new chips improve on the previous Kinect. After Nintendo Co.’s Wii introduced a handheld controller than let gamers play by swinging and moving the device, Kinect pushed the envelope further by integrating full-body motion and voice into games. For some customers, it hasn’t delivered on its initial promise.

“I’m unhappy with the way it works,” Sanfilippo said of the current Kinect. “And I’m not sure if I would want the device if I upgrade to an Xbox One. The selling point from Microsoft is that this one is more accurate and faster.”

Precision Needed

The PrimeSense chip in the previous Kinect, which sold 24 million units, or about one for every three Xbox 360 machines, didn’t provide the precision and responsiveness that Microsoft needed for the device. That version has trouble reading the motions of small children, seated players and low-light situations, Holmdahl said.

The new iteration handles those situations better and can pick up even small changes, such as a finger movement, facial expressions and heart rate, he said, and has a field of view that’s 60 percent bigger than the previous Kinect.

As the new Xbox is rolled out for the holiday shopping season, Microsoft will see whether the new chips can make Kinect a bigger draw for both families and hard-core gamers -- and help justify Xbox One’s premium price.

“It’s super-important,” Holmdahl said. “We have an opportunity to change the living room.”

Hoping the new Kinect ends up fitting the same top-of-flat-screen mount as the original Kinect.

Paging through my games list recently, I realized I hadn't played a Kinect [movement] game in over a year; however I routinely use the voice controls for Mass Effect 3 and Hulu Plus. Good to hear that the new XB1 interface will be so voice-friendly... I've gotten spoiled and have caught myself saying "Xbox... pause" when using my standalone bluray player before.

"We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas." - Agnes Mona Flanders

I was reading Oliver Kreylos's blog (he's a pretty amazing engineer who writes pretty easy-to-understand articles on 3D graphics) because he has an Oculus Rift article up... If you're a fan of how tech works, especially 3D graphics or VR stuff, check out his blog: http://doc-ok.org/

he put an interesting response to a person's question about whether making the camera 60 fps would make a difference to latency (the response was about the original Kinect, not the new Kinect):

Camera latency is primarily determined by exposure time, read-out time, any in-camera processing, and transmission to the host. The Kinect1, when using “raw” depth and color data from a PC, has approximately 20ms latency. Using a downsampled image like on the Xbox will likely reduce that latency to around 15ms.

The oft-discussed Kinect tracking latency stems mostly from the skeletal tracking algorithm run on the Xbox, which is computationally involved. I’m guessing it’s 90ms-15ms=75ms, give or take. Without changing the algorithm, going to a 60 fps camera will probably reduce latency only a little, if at all. Say 10ms from the camera, that still leaves 85ms total.

They're leaving the USB interface open (like on the original Kinect) means that there plenty for the hackers and developers to play with on the PC side of things. Combine that with the fact that the Xbox One will allow indie publishers to use the One as a development kit and have access to the Kinect hardware (Kinect was unavailable to indie developers on the 360 as there was no Kinect support in XNA for XBLIG (Xbox Live Indie Games)). Hopefully some of those guys decide to write those cool demos for the Xbox One.

There was a video presentation at Build 2013 (the link will show the video for download or streaming) all about the sensor and it’s SDK. some of the highlights geared toward the hackers who made the first Kinect famous:

> No protection on the output. The guys claims that they’ve actually made the protocol nicer to deal with in this version, and that they want people to use it with other toolkits. From other sources, not the video, it’s been claimed the weird plug is to ensure that it gets a dedicated USB hub to itself, rather then ending up sharing one with a HDD or other USB2/3 devices that could be plugged in.

> They confirm that you can run two in parallel without issues. They say there’s a small risk of overlap but since the pulses are so short you should be ok.

Up until now information on Ubisoft’s Xbox One Kinect title ‘Fighter Within’ was pretty slim – but now thanks to the power of the world wide web and the ever caching Google, wonder no more! Fighter Within, is described as the next-gen game that provides you the excitement of a real fight, throwing you into the most immersive total-body combat experience ever made. Enter a world of sweat, timing and training thanks to kick-ass motion recognition. Brawling with your friends will never feel the same again. Test your real fighting skills thanks to the next gen of motion recognition. The new Kinect technology arms Fighter Within with realistic fighting moves using unprecedented 1 to 1 precision movement tracking.

Enter a brutal, physical and liberating world. New-gen jaw-dropping graphics, real-time wounds, sweat & facial impacts, extreme arenas environments, primal animations… The new Xbox One Kinect allows you to dive into a unique realistic experience and feel the fight. All you expect from a next gen fighting game is there.

True friends don’t pull their punches: Let off some steam and earn your bragging rights over your best mates in ultra-raw fighting sessions. New Kinect’s power dramatically improves the multiplayer experience, allowing you to invite and defy your friends over a good fight right in your living room, or to compete online against the world to become the ultimate fighter.

Reveal your abilities: Kicks, punches, counters, throws, combos, special moves, everything you expect from a fighting game is there: Execute precise and amazing combos thanks to the new Kinect and use the huge diversity of gameplay to choose between core combat or special attacks to destroy your opponents.

Think first, hit after: Skills are not enough to win a match, superior fighting tactics will give you the upper hand. Use your surroundings to your advantage, collect totems and position them wisely in the arena to power up your attacks, choose the right moves and signature attacks that will undermine your rival and finish him off with a devastating final blow.

I've tried Fighters Uncaged. Sometimes it felt good. But some of the move detection was really flaky. Seriously, the hardest move to pull off, if memory serves me right, is the leg sweep. You do the motion and 3 different things can happen. The leg sweep was probably the hardest thing to do (it was hard to pass the training mode because it wasn't recognizing my leg sweep properly). Another move that I remember having problems with was the head butt. The Kinect ended up interpreting that in 2 different ways so sometimes I would head butt when I didn't want to and other times I couldn't head butt for the life of me...

But it was probably the hardest workout you could do on the Kinect. The only other close one was Wipeout in the Zone because of all the running and jumping.

I'm only calling it a spiritual successor because it came from Ubisoft and it's a Kinect fighter. we don't know who's in charge of programming it this upcoming one. Fighters Uncaged came from a no-name group in Belgium.

hopefully this comes from Ubisoft Quebec who has some good experience with Kinect games. a chance at a 1 to 1 fighter is a challenge that I think they could handle.

don't know if it's been mentioned here yet, but in the latest IGN AMA MS said the cord length for the Kinect is 3 meters. Not too bad, about what I expected.

With my current setup I'm wanting to use my One/Kinect on my plasma at one end of the room and my projector setup at the other end of the room. I need about 30 feet of cable to be able to leave the One in the rack and move the Kinect back and forth, so I'm hoping for some good length cable extensions, but I'm not overly optimistic.

Ubisoft announced today that it is currently developing Fighter Within — a motion-controlled fighting game for Xbox One that uses the Kinect 2 motion sensor.

Speaking to Polygon, Luc Verdier from development studio Daoka said the Kinect 2 motion sensor finally offered the studio the opportunity to make a motion-controlled fighting game that could accurately read the player's actions.

"It was not really possible with Kinect 1 because it wasn't accurate enough," Verdier said. "But thanks to this new generation sensor, we can accurately track two players in front of a TV. We now have this one-to-one technology in the game, meaning what you do is replicated on the screen."

To play Fighter Within, players stand facing the TV screen and the Kinect 2 sensor. The sensor then tracks the player's actions, and these actions are translated into fighting moves that are performed by the two avatars on the screen.

The game uses moves found in traditional fighting games like different levels of punches and kicks, blocks, combos and special moves and abilities that are unique to each character. Many of the basic moves translate directly into the game, so if a player wants their character to perform a punch, the player performs a punch. Movements like dodging, blocking and low punches also translate directly. However, for more complex maneuvers, the game uses different actions to trigger those attacks.

"We don't expect people to do high round kicks, so there are triggering animations," Verdier said. "But that was not enough. We wanted to have spectacular things on the screen, so we decided to create this chi energy bar, which is a sort of spiritual energy that enables the characters to do extraordinary things."

Once the chi energy bar fills up, players can trigger certain moves using specific gestures, such as holding both hands in front of their chest, palms facing forward, and pushing back and forth. Every move serves a tactical purpose. For example, if a player is triggering a combo or special move, then they are left vulnerable for a few seconds, so it is a risk/reward mechanism.

Verdier says the game can be a bit of a workout, but players can choose how they wish to play. There are some players who are more aggressive and play intensely, while others move less by playing defensively.

"It looks a lot like a traditional fighting game, but we added a new layer, which is physicality," Verdier said. "But you still have to be tactical-minded to build up your strategy."

Players Will Experience Next-Generation Fighting for the First Time at Gamescom 2013

London, UK – August 20, 2013 – Today, Ubisoft® announced that Fighter WithinTM, the first fighting game designed specifically for the next generation of hardware, will be available for Xbox One, the all-in-one games and entertainment system from Microsoft at launch. Fighter Within makes full use of Kinect for Xbox One technology, providing players the excitement of a real fighting competition while battling their friends to earn their bragging rights.

Fighter Within delivers on the long awaited motion fighting promise, inviting players to prove their fighting skills and sharpen their plan of attack in order to beat their opponents. Fighter Within lets players throw punches, kicks, counters and combos in the most immersive, brutal and liberating fighting experience yet.

"Fighter Within taps into the ultimate fighting game fantasy by offering players the most engaging and physical motion fighting experience on Xbox One," said Geoffroy Sardin, EMEA Chief Marketing & Sales Officer, Ubisoft. "Players will square off against their friends to test their skills, prove their dominance and unleash their Fighter Within."

"With more precise and responsive voice, vision and motion technology, the new Kinect for Xbox One will immerse players into games and entertainment like never before," said George Peckham, General Manager, Global Publishing Group at Microsoft. "Ubisoft has delivered a wide variety of innovative, exclusive titles for Kinect for Xbox 360 and will no doubt give gamers another one-of-a-kind experience with Fighter Within on Xbox One."

Fighter Within delivers real-time wounds, sweat and facial impacts in order to propel players into the fight. With its impressive movement tracking, varied attack moves and the thrill of competing against friends, Fighter Within re-envisions the climactic fighting experience for a new generation of players.

Ubisoft is a leading producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment products worldwide and has grown considerably through a strong and diversified line-up of products and partnerships. Ubisoft has offices in 26 countries and has sales in more than 55 countries around the globe. It is committed to delivering high-quality, cutting-edge video game titles to consumers. For the 2012-13 fiscal year Ubisoft generated sales of 1.256 billion euros. To learn more, please visit: http://www.ubisoftgroup.com.